Ok, I have a question. First I dont have a large programing background (what I do know is Html, Java, some PHP, I use to known basic C++ and basic pascal). I have been looking for an AI system that will look though a file or a group of files and give to the user a report of the infomation in the file(s). As well be able to give answers to questions based on infomation in the file. An example: A company makes a product however about 10% of every product maded is broken so the workers put this info into a file. Later the AI program when asked how many products were borken it will tell the user. if the % is higher the 10 it will say "25 % broken, rate to higher" or somthing like that. Based on infomation it will give reponces fitting to the data, that the programer can program. I hope your fallowing what am trying to say. My plan is I have created an rts game, and I would like the user be able to get real time data based on unit loss, unit kills, battle filed data, intel and much more from this (i hope) working AI program. and once thats working maybe have it be able to give hints to the player based on the data. and ideas where I could look?

I'm sorry but I don't see a) the link between this and AI and b) the link between your file searching and an RTS?

Cheers

I think he wants to make the file sharer program as a practice project?

Leapster that is not AI it is... well a usual computer program doing what computer programs do... analysing lots of data ;)

I don't see why this should be a problem. Just scan through all the files, and keep a record of the number of broken ones compared to the working ones, to find out the proportion?

I suggest you start with a simpler game first.

To keep tract of RTS statistics should be rather simple. Just keep a variable of say totalunitslost and add 1 to it each time a unit is lost.

Sounds like you want to build the 'Computer' from Star Trek TNG

where officers would commonly ask it random questions aloud, and it would research an answer instantly based on its library.


There are a number of obstacles here...
First of all, you'd need the ability to recognize a question based on what the user typed... figure out what aspect of what subject he is asking... sounds like a big complicated language parsing problem

Then the actual data retrieval issue... sounds like the data you want to use is unstructured, random files...
They will need to be read, and their content must be derived by the AI... This in itself is another difficult problem of interpreting human generated text... and recognizing the context...
You could then index that stuff by keyword/context (many search engines do this kinda thing) but the next step for actaully answer generalized questions about the content as a whole... and drawing indirect conclusions based on data... that I have no clue...

Pretty much its not going to be possible except in the limited case of:
pre-programmed questions only.
data already manually summarized to produce answers to those questions.
(basically you'd work within a database and have pre-written queries corresponding to each question)
theres a remote chance you can build some kind of parser that converts a limited set of questions into database queries... but... thats kinda a long shot...and it would still be limited only to what is queriable by the database structure...

If think you have interpreted his problem too deeply. From what I can gather, stats gathering in a strategy game is his main concern, which is easy to do.

He's right kind of like the computer from Star Trek TNG.
However I have come to the understanding that I would need to have predefined questions. The questions would have to be text based for now, however I would like the program to have a graphic interface (to output the data).

However the problem I am having is what program language and tools would be best suited for this type of project as well what site online could help?

As well I would still like the program to try to put togther some sort of report and suggestions based on the data collected.

I really dont know where to start. Any help would be great

Quote: Original post by leapster
He's right kind of like the computer from Star Trek TNG.
However I have come to the understanding that I would need to have predefined questions. The questions would have to be text based for now, however I would like the program to have a graphic interface (to output the data).

However the problem I am having is what program language and tools would be best suited for this type of project as well what site online could help?

As well I would still like the program to try to put togther some sort of report and suggestions based on the data collected.

I really dont know where to start. Any help would be great

You could try using Prolog or some other logic language. The interpreter doesn't exactly take natural language queries, but it's a lot closer than C/C++/C# or any imperative language. Plus you'd just have to learn the syntax -trying to write a similar interface imperatively would take a while. With Prolog, you basicly set up a knowledge base which looks something like:
A is true if B and C is true.
B is true.
C is true.

Then you can ask it questions like, "Is C true? Is A true?" This is a pretty trivial example but you get the idea. Still, it's not going to be easy and you still need to do what AP mentioned above. I haven't used Prolog in years, maybe someone else knows a good tutorial site?